A blogger today is a trusted voice in their community. This has made blogging an important tool for the marketing of brands and services. Conveying your message to the world in this way can be the difference between an effective campaign and struggling to break through to your audience.
With all the potential revenue marketers stand to gain from partnering with bloggers, getting one with a wide reach in your preferred community whilst rooting out other marketers with the same interests, can be a huge task.
Sometimes you send what you think is a good pitch, but someone else offers better, so you lose a good opportunity to work with a great blogger. That’s just the way it is. Therefore, successful marketers need to stand out by investing a lot of time and effort into forging strong connections with bloggers of quality.
If what you seek is to be better at connecting with bloggers and boost your blogger outreach drive, then this is for you. Keep reading!
The hunt for a blogger
The search for a blogger to work with begins with choosing the right blogger outreach agency. The right blogger is preferably one in the same industry or the most similar industry to the brand or service you need to promote. The audience of your chosen blogger should find that your product resonates with their interests. Your selected blogger’s point of view needs to be seen as credible by his followers for it to generate any positives for you.
The size of your blogger’s follower base is equally important. A large following means your posts get to reach a larger amount of people. A sneak peek of your blogger’s social media channels is recommended if you want to know how wide their reach is. Key pointers to look out for are the level of engagement in their posts in comparison with the number of followers they have.
Effective blogger outreach
The average blogger doesn’t mind earning extra cash as long as they continue to offer valuable content to their followers and don’t lose any of their followers as a result – or their credibility with them. The way your message is framed and perceived can be the difference between a positive response and a negative one. You cannot be too careful with this subject, because a badly-worded message can lead to bad PR for your company. Here are a few tips to help you get it right:
1. Avoid using inexperienced marketers in your outreach
Making contact with anyone presents you with the opportunity to get it right the first time. Saddling a newbie with the responsibility of handling aspects of your blogger outreach which requires a thorough understanding of industry etiquette or unwritten rules could expose their inexperience and can be hurtful to your purposes.
Too often the damage is already done when communication reflects ignorance or disregards basic professional etiquette. Worse still, you may have to deal with the bad reputation this mistake might give you.
Make sure sensitive aspects of your communication strategy are handled by an expert blogger outreach service that understands how things work in your industry and knows what protocols to follow when a conversation takes an unexpected turn.
2. Send out blogger-specific message
When communicating with bloggers, you need to understand the tier they fall into, to understand what to do and what not to do. Blogosphere “royalty” may turn down every offer you make if you get it wrong with your evaluation of their services at the first attempt, while others may leave room for negotiation even if your first offer is way off.
Your ability to make sure your dialogue/pitch is representative of their influence will help you connect with them and may reduce the need for drawn-out negotiations and your chances of being turned down.
3. Do your follow-ups
When making contact with a blogger, design your communication strategy in phases and handle each phase with brand perception in your sights, and with the long term in mind. Do not go too long without sending a follow-up message to them. Make sure you have your templates well planned, but don’t send too many messages, to prevent being marked as spam. Be quick to wrap things up if they have no desire to work with you. You need to bear in mind that how they remember you is just as important, even if a deal is not agreed.
4. Be as direct as possible
Dealing with messages can become a monotonous routine. Doing your research on the blogger you are trying to sign up helps you to be as direct as possible with your message. Make your message straightforward and professional, and you will improve your chances of success.
5. Maintain healthy relationships
The key to success is strategy, strategy, strategy! Make sure you build a healthy relationship with bloggers. A product may not be a good fit to reach an agreement today, but you might benefit from goodwill for another deal in the future. This understanding is crucial to long-term success and determines your success in influencer marketing. As long as you are remembered favourably, you can forge healthy relationships which could yield free publicity or expansion of your brand awareness where you least expect it.
Getting it right with your blogger outreach will reward you with positive outcomes on all fronts if you pay attention to the rules that make for a successful campaign. Hiring the services of a blogger outreach agency can help you skip through the hassles many companies encounter in building their networks, and set you on good footing in the digital marketplace. Every big player today started as a minnow. You have the advantage of digital marketing to generate that buzz and make your presence known and drive your sales numbers up.
If you’d like us to help you on this quest, get in touch with us today.